Hoboken mayor says Christie administration held Sandy funds hostage

Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer said on MSNBC’s “Up With Steve Kornacki” today two members of Gov. Christie’s administration told her she would not get all the Sandy relief money she requested unless she approved a redevelopment plan for her town. Zimmer didn’t approve it. And her request for $127 million in relief became $142,000 for a back-up generator and $200,000 in recovery grants.

Zimmer said the word to her came from Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno and Richard Constable, Christie’s community affairs commissioner. She said Constable brought the subject up as she was sitting on stage at a college, miked up, ready to do an event. She shared a diary entry related to it:

“We are mic’ed up with other panelists all around us and probably the sound team is listening. And he says “I hear you are against the Rockefeller project”. I reply “I am not against the Rockefeller project; in fact I want more commercial development in Hoboken.” “Oh really? Everyone in the State House believes you are against it – the buzz is that you are against it. If you move that forward, the money would start flowing to you” he tells me.”

Kornacki said all named denied Zimmer’s allegations. Christie spokesman Michael Drewniak called it “outlandishly false things.” “What or who is asking her to say such outlandish things is anyone’s guess,” Drewniak wrote.

Lisa Ryan, spokeswoman for Constable, said in a statement: “Mayor Zimmer’s allegation that on May 16, 2013, Commissioner Constable conditioned Hoboken’s receipt of Sandy aid on her moving forward with a development project is categorically false.”

Christie Reed, a spokesman for Christie, called MSNBC “a partisan network” which had been “openly hostile” to the governor. He said Hoboken had been approved for $70 million in federal aid and targeted for more when the Obama administration approves more funding.

The mayor said she would take a lie detector test and urged others named to do so as well.

Zimmer kept a diary and brought it to the MSNBC set. She wrote, “I thought he (Christie) was honest. I thought he was moral. I thought he was something very different. This week I found out he’s cut from the same corrupt cloth that I have been fighting for the last four years.” Zimmer in many ways was a pro-Christie Democrat. Even today she said there were many good things from Christie’s first term.

The mayor of the town that was 80 percent under water after superstorm Sandy, said of Guadagno: “She pulls me aside and says that I need to move forward with the Rockefeller project. It’s very important to the governor. The word is that you are against it and you need to move forward or we are not going to be able to help you. I know it’s not right. These things should not be are connected. But they are, she says. ‘If you tell anyone I said it, I will deny it.’”

Zimmer came to office because of a corruption scandal which involved her predecessor. It was launched by Christie when he was U.S. attorney. When Zimmer came to office she inherited a planned project that would have given a New York developer, the Rockefeller Group, right to develop a stretch of Hoboken. Zimmer wanted a professional study which had to wait until her town could afford it. The Rockefeller Group told MSNBC it knew nothing about Zimmer’s allegations but “if it turns out to be true, it would be deplorable.”

The Rockefeller Group is represented by Wolff & Samson, Kornacki reported, the firm of David Samson, the chairman of the Port Authority. He was appointed by Christie. Samson also was briefly attorney general under Gov. Jim McGreevey. The Port Authority approved $75,000 for a study which eventually said only three blocks of the 19-block area in question were fit for redevelopment, the three owned by the Rockefeller Group, Zimmer said.

Kornacki also has reported that another redevelopment at the foot of the George Washington Bridge in Fort Lee may have been connected to the tie-up of traffic caused by the shutting down of access lanes that turned into what is being called Bridgegate.

It was not clear who was involved or how anyone would have benefitted from the tie up.

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About Bob Ingle

Bob Ingle is Senior Political Columnist for Gannett New Jersey newspapers and co-author of The New York Times' Best Seller, "The Soprano State: New Jersey's Culture of Corruption" and "Chris Christie: The Inside Story Of His Rise To Power". He has won numerous journalism awards and is often a news analyst on radio and television. Twitter @ bobingle99.

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Bob Ingle, Senior Political Columnist for Gannett New Jersey newspapers, on politics in "The Soprano State".

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Bob IngleBob Ingle is Senior Political Columnist for Gannett New Jersey Newspapers and co-author of The New York Times' Best Seller, "The Soprano State: New Jersey's Culture of Corruption." Hear him Fridays at 5 p.m. on www.tommygshow.com radio. twitter.com/bobingle99 E-mail Bob

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"Chris Christie: The Inside Story of His Rise to Power," written by Bob Ingle and Michael Symons, offers the first inside portrait of New Jersey’s governor, who in two years as governor emerged as a national Republican Party figure famous for his blunt public statements. The book details Christie’s combative public persona and deep family roots, tracing his improbable political rise from a bruising stint in county government to his anti-corruption crusade as U.S. Attorney for New Jersey. Chris Christie: The Inside Story of His Rise to Power goes behind the scenes to reveal his family life, his public life, and what the future might hold..

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"The Soprano State," written by Bob Ingle and Sandy McClure, details the you-couldn't-make-this-up true story of the corruption that has pervaded New Jersey politics, government, and business for the past thirty years. From Jimmy Hoffa purportedly being buried somewhere beneath the end zone in Giants Stadium in the Meadowlands, through allegations of a thoroughly corrupt medical and dental university, through Mafia influence at all levels, to a governor who suddenly declares himself a “gay American” and resigns, the Garden State might indeed be better named after the HBO mobsters.

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